![JonathanCosens-WaterDropAndRipples-featured A water drop and ripples](https://anchorrising.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/JonathanCosens-WaterDropAndRipples-featured.jpg)
Modern medicine will keep doing what it does if we let it.
Such stories as this one are among the first things to come to mind every time our political system lurches left:
Over a decade ago, UCLA physician-scientists began using a pioneering gene therapy they developed to treat children born with a rare and deadly immune system disorder. They now report that the effects of the therapy appear to be long-lasting, with 90% of patients who received the treatment eight to 11 years ago still disease-free. …
In the gene therapy approach detailed in the new paper, Dr. Donald Kohn of UCLA and his colleagues removed blood-forming stem cells from each child’s bone marrow, then used a specially modified virus, originally isolated from mice, to guide healthy copies of the ADA gene into the stem cells’ DNA. Finally, they transplanted the cells back into the children’s bone marrow. The therapy, when successful, prompts the body to produce a continuous supply of healthy immune cells capable of fighting infections. Because the transplanted stem cells are the baby’s own, there is no risk of rejection.
This sort of thing requires large, risk-taking investments (including the learning investment of the researchers themselves). It requires functioning supply chains. It requires all of the things that innovative businesses require, which can fall apart faster than we like to think.